Dan Howdle | November 17th, 2021

Sky Atlantic: How to watch

Game Of Thrones may be over, but Sky Atlantic is still Sky's jewel in the crown – one of the best reasons to subscribe to Sky TV over any other competing service. But what if you're with another provider? Are there other ways to watch it?

Sky Atlantic providers

Virgin Media TV

Unfortunately there's no way to watch Sky Atlantic on Virgin TV as a listed channel the way you would watch it on Sky. However, that's not to say there is no way to watch it at all if you're with Virgin Media. You just need to be prepared to employ a little trickery.

Sky offers almost all its content through NOW TV – its own, separate in name only, streaming service. So you can get instant access to Sky Atlantic on your mobile, Smart TV, games console, streaming stick or device (think Roku, Google Chromecast, Apple TV and so on) tablet or wherever you tend to watch, just by signing up to the NOW TV Entertainment Membership. In fact, the Virgin V6 box itself is one of the few devices you can't load the NOW TV app onto.

That's not to say that Virgin TV is necessarily a bad choice if your aim is to watch Sky Atlantic. It's an arguably better subscription TV service than Sky's, it's just missing this one thing. And it's a thing you can work around, so long as you're prepared to pay a small additional monthly fee. Here's some more information on NOW TV.

Watch Sky Atlantic on NOW TV

The NOW Entertainment Membership gets you these live entertainment channels: Sky 1, Sky Witness, Sky Atlantic, Sky Comedy, Sky Documentaries, Sky History, Sky Nature, Gold, Sky Crime, Comedy Central, Sky Arts, MTV, Nat Geo and SyFy. Plus, you get box sets for shows from all of these channels, as well as Challenge and Pick. The bad news is if you're only after Sky Atlantic and you're on Virgin TV, you're going to be paying extra for a lot of duplicate content. Then again it really doesn't cost much so you'll have to weigh the costs and benefits as they apply to you.

There are also 6 live kids' channels: Boomerang, Cartoon Network, Nickelodeon, Cartoonito, Nick Jr and Nicktoons. On-demand shows are available for all these channels except Cartoonito. And you get brilliant box sets from Milkshake!, CBeebies and CBBC too.

These memberships only renew every 30 days until you cancel, so you can get your premium TV fix and keep the flexibility to cancel at any time without having to sign up to a long contract. As a new customer you'll get a 14-day free trial, after which time you'll pay a monthly fee.

You can also add a NOW Boost for £3 which allows you to watch your favourite shows in Full HD and surround sound on up to three devices at the same time.

If you're only interested in one show, and you're unlikely to dive into the 300 other box sets on offer, it's always worth timing it exactly so your sign-up coincides as closely as possible with the first episode and ends with the last. Then, when your favourite series ends, or if you just get bored, you can unsubscribe from your NOW TV Entertainment Membership at any time.

Sky TV

Sky owns, manages and runs Sky Atlantic so it makes sense to sign up to get the best experience. If you want to take advantage of all the gloriously detailed scenery that Westeros has to offer, you can watch Sky Atlantic in glorious 4K Ultra HD with a Sky TV subscription.

If you want to watch Sky Atlantic through Sky TV, simply pick the Sky Entertainment pack . Sky Entertainment is the provider's cheapest TV package but still offers you 300 channels to choose from, including Sky Atlantic. You'll have to sign up to a minimum-term contract of 18 months so it's certainly not as flexible as buying a NOW TV Entertainment Membership.

You'll get a Sky Q set-top box in the post. All you have to do is connect it to your TV, and you're set and ready to watch. There's also the benefit of Sky Go, which comes for free with any Sky TV subscription and lets you watch Sky Atlantic on your mobile, tablet, laptop or through a games console.

You can watch Sky Go anywhere you can get an internet connection, whether that's on your home wi-fi, public wi-fi, or over your mobile network. If you're using your phone's data allowance by streaming Sky Go over mobile, just be careful and keep an eye on how much data you're using; streaming Sky Atlantic with Sky Go will drain your data like nobody's business.

NOW TV

If you have a compatible device, you can watch Sky Atlantic through a NOW TV Entertainment Membership and take your favourite shows with you wherever you go. If you're on a tablet, or Android or iOS smartphone and you want to watch your NOW TV Entertainment Membership on the move, you'll need to download the NOW TV app from Google Play Store or from the App Store. The NOW app no longer supports iOS 9 or 10. If your iOS device is running on 9 or 10, you'll still be able to watch for as long as the app works for you, but you won't receive any updates like new features and bug fixes. If your device supports later iOS versions, we recommend you update to 11 or later. For Windows or Mac laptops you'll just need to download the NOW Player desktop app.

Extra devices supported by NOW TV include the Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, Playstation 4 and Playstation 5, as well as LG, Sony, HiSense and Samsung smart TVs, streaming devices like the NOW TV smart box and Smart Stick, all models of the Roku boxes and players, Amazon Fire TV Stick 2nd gen or later, BT TV Box, Amazon Fire TV Cube: 2nd gen (2019), Chromecast, Apple TV HD (4th gen) or 4K and the YouView Box.

BT TV

Sky Atlantic is available on your BT TV set-top box via the NOW TV app, which of course you will need an additional subscription for. This is obviously a step up from Virgin TV in this respect, though, as you won't need any additional devices to access the app, just your BT TV YouView+ box, or the BBC iPlayer app.

TalkTalk TV

Since BT TV and TalkTalk TV use the same YouView set-top boxes, it stands to reason you can also watch NOW TV on TalkTalk TV. You can't get the channel directly, but instead will be able to load the NOW TV app onto your set-top box and access the content from there after purchasing the Entertainment Membership.